Laycock is a hallmark of stability at William and Mary

WILLIAMSBURG — It's tempting to refer to Jimmye Laycock as a William and Mary institution, as he enters his 30th football season at his alma mater. But that would be a disservice to a man who has forged a program and left an imprint on an entire school.

Laycock arrived as head coach in 1980 and never left, which is remarkable in itself. Among active Division I coaches, only Penn State's Joe Paterno (44 years), Bob Ford at Albany (37) and Bobby Bowden at Florida State (34) have been at their schools longer.

As a head coach and player, Laycock has been a part of almost 35 percent of the games in the 116-year history of W&M's program — 369 of 1,063 games.

Beyond the longevity, Laycock (189-138-2) built a consistently successful football program where there was no reason one should exist. Unwavering academic standards, along with facilities that rested between archaic and non-existent, made the Tribe under Laycock a model of accomplishing more with less.

"The closer you get to the program, you appreciate how great a coach he is," athletic director Terry Driscoll said, "because he did not always have the resources and he had a smaller talent pool at a very academically — we use the word 'rigorous' around here — institution. He has those things embedded in his program, and yet he consistently has had a very competitive program."

Former William and Mary admissions director Gary Ripple, who was at W&M for the first nine years of Laycock's tenure, said that working with Laycock and the football program was one of the highlights of his time at the college.

"He showed tremendous maturity for a young coach," said Ripple, who as president of the Williamsburg Kiwanis recently presented Laycock with an award for his years of service. "He had great faith in the ability of the admissions staff to evaluate the credentials of prospective football players, and he never, ever questioned our judgment. We felt that we were really partners in bringing in student-athletes."

Indeed, Laycock speaks at least as much about preparing players for life beyond football as he does about wins and losses. He is as proud of former players who succeed in business as about the likes of Super Bowl-winning coach Mike Tomlin (Class of 1995) and Philadelphia Eagles defensive coordinator Sean McDermott (Class of 1998). The program routinely has one of the highest graduation rates in Division I.

"When you wrap it all together," Driscoll said, "you have a unique individual who's firm in his beliefs and convictions and has lived them. He's never made an excuse for anything. He's always gone forward, doing the best we can with what we've had. He's demonstrated what can be done if someone is talented, intelligent and capable, and really makes a commitment."

As Laycock, 61, prepared for the 2009 season, he sat in his second-floor corner office of the $11-million football building that bears his name and discussed his position and the program. These are excerpts:

Daily Press: Do 30 seasons, 30 years here even register?

Laycock: No. It's hard to even calculate. It doesn't compute, as they say. It seems like a long time, but you look at it and it's more like 30 one-year seasons.

DP: Given the nature of the coaching profession, would you have ever thought you'd be here, or anywhere, for 30 years?

Laycock: Lord no. To be honest, I didn't think I'd be here five. The longest I'd been at one place was three years at Clemson. … Pat Dye, used to be the coach at Auburn, right after I got this job, I saw him at a coaching thing. He said, 'Let me give you one bit of advice.' He said, 'Go there and work like you're going to be there the rest of your life. And the first chance you get, get out of there.' (Laughs) And that's probably more the norm in coaching. Everybody thinks that the first chance you get, you get out.

DP: Is coaching here the same now as it was your first few years?

Laycock: In terms of on-the-field football stuff, football is a lot more involved than it used to be, a lot more technical. It's more specialized, and coaching is a lot more sophisticated than it used to be. But the thing here is, it's still about developing players. That's one of the things you've got to understand here, is that you've got to get your players better. You've got to put them in better situations, you've got to learn more about them, be more innovative to use their talents and minimize their weaknesses. It's more of a challenge here, and it's always been. With our recruiting pool being as small as it is because of the academic requirements, we're not going to be getting the same players that a lot of other people get, just because of numbers and academic requirements. So therefore, you've got to make good choices and choose solid players and develop them. You can't get frustrated because they're not all-world players their first or second year here. That part of it hasn't changed, in terms of the developmental aspect of the program.

DP: You're probably as close as a college coach can come to having tenure, to being a tenured professor. Given your status, what constitutes success for you these days?

Laycock: Success to me is the guys coming back four or five or 10 years from now and seeing what they've done, seeing that they're living successful lives, that they've learned a lot from the football program, that they continue to appreciate the football program. When you do that, I think you're being successful. If you graduate your players and they're doing well and they're coming back and they're staying involved … You see a guy like Mike Tomlin or Sean McDermott, or guys in medicine or guys in business or guys in law coming back and they're successful, that tells you you're doing things the right way.

Obviously, you want to have success on the field, too, which we have. We had a (slump) for a couple years, but I think we're getting back. And that's going to happen. It's probably surprising that it hasn't happened more here, given the circumstances that we've been under.

DP: Lots of head coaches are overseers and let the assistants do the coaching, but you've remained hands-on, particularly with the quarterbacks. Is that still your favorite part of the job?

Laycock: Yeah. I wish I had more time to do it. One of the things that's changed is there are more administrative things that take some of that away. I don't do as much (on-field practice coaching) as I used to. I'm still with the offense, we still meet, but maybe not as much as I used to because of other things. Part of that is I've got coaches who've been with me for a while and they know what they're doing. Basically, they'll cut to the chase for me, we'll get right to the point, and I don't have to do so much of the grinding work that they do.

DP: Now that you have improved the talent level the past couple years and have a facility that's comparable to your peers, what do you think is do-able, what's the program capable of?

Laycock: I think we can compete, I hope we can compete week-in, week-out in this league. I want to be able to compete for the championship in this league. Some weeks you can, some weeks you can't, some years you might, some years you might not. But that's what we're striving to do.

DP: Do you think that competing at the CAA level allows you to compete nationally?

Laycock: You don't have to worry about any other level, if you're on a (competitive) level in this league, I can assure you of that. If you can compete in this league, you can compete. Don't worry about the rest of it. The rest of it will work out. You look at the Richmond game last year, that's a great example of that. We turn it over seven times and lose on a blocked kick in overtime. Richmond plays Appalachian (State) in the playoffs, Appalachian turns it over seven times and gets blown out. And Appalachian is a pretty good football team.

DP: You have had opportunities to take other jobs and declined chances to get involved in other openings at higher levels. Any regrets about not giving Division I-A (now the Football Bowl Subdivision) a shot?

Laycock: I wouldn't say regrets. I have no regrets about the way things have worked out here, especially now that we have the facility. It was getting to a point where it was pretty frustrating with the facility, or lack thereof. I'm not telling anything out of school. It was really getting frustrating that we were being successful, but still couldn't make any strides in that area. That may be the only thing.

I look back and think, who's to tell? I could have given it a shot and been very successful, or I could have gone somewhere and be out of coaching right now. You don't know. Lou Holtz was telling me one time, 'You make a decision, and then you make the decision right.' You make the decision to stay, or you make the decision to leave, but you make the decision right. Sometimes, there were jobs that people didn't want to talk to me about. There were some that I pulled out of, too. I've never stopped trying to make William and Mary a better program, and the thing that I've done a decent job of, is knowing which battles to fight and which ones not to fight; where to push and where not to push. One regret that I do have a little bit is that I did not push harder sooner for facility improvement. I probably should have pushed that sooner, but I kind of looked at the grand scheme of William and Mary. We're struggling with a lot of different things financially and trying to get things here. It finally hit me one time with (his son) Michael, when he was real young, we rode by the (McCormack-Nagelsen) tennis center, he wanted to know why tennis had that nice building and we didn't have anything? How come football is this big and doesn't have anything? I said, 'You know, you've got a pretty good point. I better start pushing for it.'

… But so far as regrets and looking back and changing things, there's no sense in even thinking about that, because there's nothing you can do about it. That said, I don't have any questions that I can coach on any level. That's not an issue. That was never an issue in my mind. But the thing you learn more and more in coaching, you've got to be in the right situation, you've got to have the right support, you've got to have the right tools to be successful. Just because you're smart, a good coach and know what you're doing doesn't mean you can be successful. I feel like I can coach. I feel like I know what I'm doing. I feel like I can organize and do some stuff on pretty much any level.

The last 11 months have been difficult for Anthony and Eldrie Scott, with every holiday or milestone bringing another reminder. They had lost their only child, something they pray no other parent has to experience.